Dell to invest more in India to maintain high growth

New York, June 5 (IANS) Dell, the world’s second largest personal computer maker, will invest more in India in the coming years to match the growth of its products there, which is expected to continue. Dell’s revenue in India grew year-on-year by 52 percent, higher than the 30 percent growth in China. The company’s product shipments to India grew 10 times faster than the industry average, while the growth in notebook shipments to China was three times the industry average.

Amid the announcement of the Texas-based Dell’s first quarter results Thursday, company CEO Michael Dell said overall, the company’s revenue from outside the US during the period surpassed that from the US for the first time.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries led Dell’s accelerated growth in emerging markets with 73 percent increase in shipments and 58 percent rise in revenue that accounted for almost 9 per cent of the company’s total revenue.

“The Indian market is growing. Our investment in India grew close to 100 percent. We expect to keep investing in India. We have extensive activity there in software development and manufacturing. For the last 7-8 years, our business and workforce in India grew tremendously. We expect the growth to continue so also the investment commensurate with the growth,” Dell said.

He did not mention any specific figure on the expected investment in India or growth numbers.

The $61 billion company, the No 1 PC maker in the world till it lost out to arch-rival HP last year, is focusing on markets like China and India to drive its growth. Most of the next billion people likely to hook up to the worldwide web would come from these two most populous countries in the world, boosting the demand for PCs and notebooks.

“India and China are high growth markets. The Indian market grew six times faster than our competition while the Chinese market grew two times,” the Dell CEO said.

To drive sales in markets like India and China, the company is launching region-specific products. Its latest laptop Dell 500 is aimed at the two Asian giants.

“We will have new products for the emerging markets. The second half of this year will see many such products. One example is Dell 500 Notebook for markets like India and China where it was promptly sold out,” Dell said.

Dell opened a manufacturing unit near Chennai last year to produce desktop computers aimed at the Indian market. The assembly line at Sriperumbudur has an initial capacity of 400,000 units. The plant is to get an investment of $30 million over five years. It already employs over 13,000 people across three business segments - call centre operations, R&D, and computer and server sales.

Breaking away from its established practice of selling directly to customers, the company has started selling PCs in US stores and would also start sales through Asian retail chains and stores.